There is substantial interest in trans-Resveratrol (tRV). It is thought that the health benefits of drinking red wine may largely be due to the presence of trans-Resveratrol. Such benefits include the lower rate of cardiovascular heart disease (CVD) associated with the consumption of red wine. Research is also ongoing into potential anti-aging, anti-cancer and anti-diabetic effects of trans-Resveratrol. Given those potential benefits, the production of foods, beverages and food supplements with high trans-Resveratrol levels is highly desirable.
Despite the high level of interest in trans-Resveratrol and its effects from the wine-making and pharma industries, reflected in the thousand of publications related to trans-Resveratrol, the only method for measuring trans-Resveratrol to date is High Performance Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectroscopy (HPLC-MS). Although HPLC-MS is a specific and sensitive assay method it has significant limitations, primarily due to the cost of equipment for performing HPLC-MS and low through-put rates. For instance, despite the fact that wine makers want to be able to assess levels of trans-Resveratrol at individual stages of wine production, and also to produce vines giving high levels of trans-Resveratrol, there are only a handful of HPLC-MS facilities in France, meaning analysis is costly and slow, making it difficult to analyse trans-Resveratrol levels over time.